Now the other when i was cleaning the shop i got to lookin at a few things (i was border and waitin for some parts to arrive) and i came up with a nifty idea on how to run sliders and not have to get out of the truck 3 times a day to grease them.

For those that don't know what i'm talking about a slider is something to use in place of shackles (works best on front axles). What they are are a piece of pipe that has metal ends on it so that it can be attached to the leaf spring end that slides over another piece of pipe fixed to the frame. This does the same thing that the shackle does when the axle is articlulating, Now one huge benefit to this setup is that the shackle can rotate with the leafs spring when the spring is at full droop, now this is esspically benefical to TTB leaf sprung trucks as the axle itself will move in more of an arc.

Now the problem with sliders as some of you know is that they have to be constantly greased as a bushing or bearing would be pretty hard to make work in this type of situation. But when i was in the shop the other day i thought of a way to have the sliders grease itself .

Its actually pretty simple setup to. First you take a couple grease guns and take the handle apart that you push to operate the grease gun. Then find a place to mount the gun just behind the sliders and then make some linkage going from the sliders to the grease gun (connected to the piston that pushes the grease out), then the pipe that the silder sides on would have to be solid with a small say a quarter inch, would be drilled all but a 1/4 through the piece of pipe the one end would be threaded with a hose fitting and a hose from the grease gun would be run to this fitting and hooked up, then the piece of pipe would have to have a bunch of 1/2" or smalle holes drilled in it in some type of pattern so that the slider can be effectivly greased.

So when the sliders moves back and forth it would be pushing the linkage to push the grease gun piston and in turn it would automaticly grease the slider. And the only down side to this setup would be the grease gun would run out of grease every so often, so the linkage and gun mounts would have to be removable so the grease tubes can be replcaed, and then theres the fact that you could mangle the linkage on trail obsatcles, but the fact that the linkage would be simple it could be made fairly beefy, and one could always make a skid plate for it to .


Anyone have any ideas on to solve the friction problem sliders have?

 

alrighty then, lol, you try that and let the rest of us know how not to do it, or how much you spend on grease in a year. im just razzin ya, but i still dont completly understand what your talkin about.

 

lol, essentially the movement of the slider going back and forth would operate a grease gun thats been modified for this application and the piece of pipe would be drilled with holes so that the grease has holes to go through to grease the slider.

Yeah if this was to be used on a DD you'd burn through a good bit of grease, but if you build the linkage just right it shouldn't burn through grease that bad, and you could always use some cheap farm grease to do it too.

 

Um . . . run shackles?






Honestly I think it sounds like too much hassle and you're be changing a pair of grease cartridges every couple hours. Creative thinking but I don't think it's very practical. If you want more articulaiton and don't like the way your stock shackles limit you look into building your own shackles with fatter bushings. I just did this and it allows for a lot more "twist" in the shackle.

 

lol, i'd just really like to see a slider setup perform myself and if it worked good i'd try just to be different .

 

I'm going to refrain from my comments on people who like being "different" because I'll offend everyone in SanFransico and get this thread pulled but you know what I'm thinking. Don't do what's different, do what works.

 

Yeah i know what you mean, but if it works certrainly is no reasone why not to try it, and i would be that big of a deal for me to change it back afterwards as the truck isn't even close to a dd.